Continued sardine catch sparks worries about fishery collapse

Federal regulators voted to allow sardine fishing to continue as usual, prompting a debate about whether the sardine fishery is in a state of collapse similar to the 1940s crash described in the novel “Cannery Row.”

That’s a cut from the 109,409 metric tons permitted in 2012, but more than the 50,526 metric tons caught in 2011. And it’s more than the sardine population, which forms a crucial part of the ocean food web, can support, said Geoff Shester, California program director for the marine conservation organization, Oceana.

The amount of fish declined by 33 percent over the last year, and has been in a continual downward spiral for six years, dropping from over a million estimated metric tons in 2007 to 435,351 last year. In addition to their value to commercial fishing operations, sardines are a vital food source for larger fish, whales and other animals.

“We’re worried that we’re just not learning from our mistakes, and history is repeating itself,” Shester said. “This fishery has collapsed before, under very similar circumstances, and here we are again.”

However, Kerry Griffin, who supervises sardines and other ocean-going fish for the council, said sardines exhibit dramatic natural population swings, and the council sets catch levels accordingly, allowing fishing operations to take no more than 8 to 12 percent of the total amount of fish.

The council drops catch levels in years when sardines decline, and cuts off fishing entirely if their numbers fall below a set threshold, he said.

“While there is much debate about whether the sardine population is collapsing or not, it remains true that our current management has built-in brakes on the fishery, if/when the population does decline,” Griffin said.

Shester cited a February publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which compared current cold water conditions and lower sardine counts to the collapse of the fishery that occurred in the middle of the last century.

“They could be worth much more just left in the water, than if we fish them,” Shester said.

Griffin however, pointed to a rebuttal letter published in the same journal in May, stating that fishing regulations have tightened since the “Cannery Row” era, when fisheries were “virtually unregulated” in California and elsewhere.

Although Shester described the council’s catch formula as overly aggressive, Griffin said it’s purposely conservative, and uses the lowest estimate of sardine populations to calculate the permitted catch.

“So not only do we have a conservative management scenario, but we purposely underestimate how many are out there,” Shester said.